Larger Matters
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: Gen, Draco and Luna friendship. Luna knows Draco is trying to apologize to her for her imprisonment in the dungeons beneath Malfoy Manor. But she doesn't think his apology is important. There are so many larger, more important things. COMPLETE.


**Title:** Larger Matters

 **Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

 **Pairing:** None; gen.

 **Rating:** PG-13

 **Warnings:** Angst, references to torture and imprisonment.

 **Wordcount:** 4200

 **Summary:** Luna knows Draco is trying to apologize for what happened to her in Malfoy Manor during the war. However, she doesn't think his apology is important. There are so many larger, more important things.

 **Author's Notes:** Another one of my Advent fics, for lunaria69, who requested: _I'd love to read something about Luna; I've been a tad obsessed with her lately! Anything gen is fine, but if you'd like a more specific prompt, maybe Luna scheming to get Draco and Harry together? ;) I love the idea of Luna and Draco being friends. However you want to run with it!_ So, this is a gen fic about Draco and Luna being friends.

 **Larger Matters**

"Lovegood, I need to talk to you."

Draco Malfoy always spoke like that when he wanted to say something important. So Luna turned towards him and let her hand fall away from the canvas. "All right. What?"

"I want—what are you doing?" Draco stopped and frowned at the canvas, then at the stump Luna had it balanced on. "How can you paint without a brush?"

"With my finger." Luna felt sorry for him. Lack of carrots must have affected his sight. Luna had noticed that there were very few carrots in any Death Eater dungeon. "See?" She painted a red swirl along the image of the rock, then paused. That wasn't the blood of a thestral. No thestral would stand in the open and bleed like that. She raised her finger covered with black paint and created the shadow of another rock. Then she nodded. Yes, that was right.

"Why are you doing that, though?"

Luna smiled at him. "Because there are secrets to the canvas that you only feel through your fingertips. Don't you ever feel that?" she added, because she honestly wasn't sure whether he did or not. "Or did you only try painting with brushes?"

"Lovegood—"

"Try it," Luna urged him. There was another stump nearby, and she drew her wand and duplicated her canvas so it could sit on that stump. Draco would have to paint around her images, because the canvas wasn't blank, but that was okay. She didn't think the Wrackspurts he had would interfere with the painting. "Here." She showed him the paints, made of crushed berries and sitting in the shallow dishes she'd brought out. "Here are the paints."

Draco looked at the paints in a hopeless way. Luna smiled at him and patted him on the back. "No one should look like that. After you paint some thestrals, maybe you won't."

Draco turned around suddenly. "I wouldn't say that thestrals are a symbol of hope."

"Oh, they can be," said Luna. "They can symbolize anything, you know?" He went on staring, and she nodded, understanding. "You've been listening to the Ministry that says they shouldn't, right? Thestrals should only symbolize death, and unicorns should only symbolize purity. Well, that means you need to start thinking about other things. Like hats."

"Hats?" Draco's voice was a mumble. He was looking upwards at his own pointed black hat, Luna saw.

Luna shook her head regretfully. Draco was the most hopeless case she had seen in a long time. Even Hermione was growing beyond some of her other prejudices to see the truth now. But she supposed no one had rescued Draco the way Luna had rescued Hermione. "Not the hats you wear. The hats you have in your head."

"I don't understand any of this."

"Not with the Wrackspurts in the way, you can't." Luna got down on her knees in front of Draco, and pulled on him until he knelt down, too. "Look into my eyes and think about hats."

He looked into her eyes, but Luna knew he wasn't thinking about hats. No one could think about hats and look that unhappy. She snapped her fingers, and he jumped a little. " _Hats_ ," she said. "Think about the way the light shines in your eyes when you take off your hat. Well, that's what you need to do, but with your mind."

Draco sighed and shut his eyes. "Will it help me to think about them if I'm not looking at you?"

"I don't know. I don't know what my face is like as a mediation aid."

But it did give Luna the most delightful idea, about taking pictures of people and putting them on little disks so other people could meditate on them. She thought Harry's face would make a wonderful picture. It made her feel so peaceful and safe. And it would be good to meditate on Neville's face when you wanted to feel happy.

"I can't think of anything," Draco complained.

Luna frowned. "Well, that's because the Wrackspurts are so busy. Here." She scooped up some blue paint on a free finger and drizzled it into his hair.

" _Lovegood!_ "

 _Oh, dear._ Draco was lunging backwards and running one hand through his hair as though he was offended. Luna stood up. "I'm sorry the Wrackspurts are filling you with anger," she said. "But if you work hard enough, you can throw them off."

Draco glared at her and shook his head. "Whatever you say, Lovegood. I should have known better than to apologize to a madwoman."

"You should!" Luna agreed. "Apologizing to mad people does no good."

Draco glared one more time and stomped off. Luna hoped he wouldn't disturb the fragile balance in some of the pools in the forest. Then she looked back and forth between the two canvases on the stumps, and clapped her hands.

She would paint one picture of normal thestrals and one picture of what thestrals would look like if they were half-frog. Draco's Wrackspurts would fly over to it and leave him alone. Wrackspurts were attracted to new things, and there wasn't much newer than thestrals with frog legs.

But it got less new as she thought about it. Luna hurried.

* * *

The next time she saw Draco, she was searching for her shoes. She knew nargles had probably taken them, but there was always the chance that it was a Snorkack. She had baited a trap with hollow eggs, and now she was winding feathers around a thin wire, which would spring up and wave the feathers around when a Snorkack stepped on it. They loved beautiful things.

"Why do you spend all your time in the forest, Lovegood?"

"Because," said Luna, with a sideways glance that she hoped conveyed all her pity, "I want to." She shook her head and wound the last wire of the snare. She thought Draco must be very far away from his own wants and desires if he could ask a question like that.

 _Perhaps it's the Wrackspurt eggs in his hair._ Luna would have to give him the recipe for the nettle shampoo that would take care of that.

"Listen, Lovegood…"

Draco had followed her as Luna moved on to the next tree to put up a welcoming sign. Luna heard a snap and a twang, and turned hurriedly back around. There must have been a Snorkack nearby!

But no, it was only Draco, who had tripped over her wire and was now yelling because it was coiled around his leg. Luna looked at him dubiously. Did he have Snorkack eggs in his hair and not Wrackspurt ones after all? But Luna had thought that Snorkacks gave birth to live babies. It was one of the many ways they resembled badgers, although of course in other ways they were more like elephants.

But now he was glaring at her and snorting on, and unfortunately he didn't sound like a Snorkack when he did that. Luna shook her head and let him out of the wire. Then she turned and set up the trap around a tree, carefully arranging it so that Draco wouldn't step on the wire again. It had probably been an accident.

 _Well, I should remember it anyway. True accidents are rare._

"I came out here to apologize to you, and you won't even look at me!"

Luna turned around. "I would have, but I don't know what you have to apologize to me for," she said, using a deliberately softer voice. "And if you yell like that, you'll frighten away all the Snorkacks, you know."

"I think it's useless. I should have known it was useless. Blaise told me it was useless. I should have listened to him…"

"You shouldn't listen so much to other people, though," Luna told him. "They don't usually have the right instincts."

Draco tried to kick the tree that she'd wound the feathers around as he left the Forest. He didn't spring the wire this time, though. Luna shook her head. She wondered what he was upset about.

 _Probably an argument with his friends,_ she thought, as she attached small ringing bells to the next wire. A Snorkack would find it and try to ring the bells with its snout, and then it would see the feathers and get distracted and stay around long enough for her to take a picture of it. _I know I hate it when I fight with my friends. Luckily, it never happens often!_

* * *

Luna looked under her bed and sighed. Her socks had gone wandering. _And_ her dress robes, right after her father had owled her to tell her that she would need them for a party he was planning to take her to over the Christmas holidays.

A second later, though, Luna began to smile. She realized what this meant. _I get to weave myself new dress robes!_

To do that, though, she had to gather enough spiderwebs to make the lace. She pulled on a clean pair of robes and ran out of the Ravenclaw Tower. Someone tried to ask about her socks on the way, but Luna waved her off. It was nice that they were so concerned. Concern never helped her socks find their way home, though.

She had made it all the way to the seventh floor and was scanning the corners for the biggest webs when she heard footsteps pattering behind her. Luna turned around. The footsteps were too loud for socks or robes, but it might be that pair of shoes that had walked off several weeks ago coming back to her.

It wasn't, though. It was Draco. But he held her socks in one hand and her dress robes in the other!

"Thank you," Luna said, stretching out her arms for them. They came to her meekly, and showed no tendency to wander off again. She smiled at Draco. "They would have made their way back eventually, you know."

Draco didn't say anything for a second. Luna looked at him with a little worry. Was that fight with his friends _still_ affecting him? She wondered if it wasn't a fight after all, but an enchantment spun by the nargles.

If it was, they were doing something new and dangerous, and she would have to write a letter to her father. They needed to keep track of all the natural history so someone could do something about it.

"How often do your clothes disappear, Lovegood?" Draco finally asked.

Luna relaxed, not completely, but some. The fight—or the nargles—couldn't be too bad if he was speaking to her. "It's not like there's a set schedule," she told him. She fingered the dress robes, almost sad to have them back. She'd really looked forward to the weaving. Maybe she could make some spiderweb lace for Ginny's Christmas present, though. "It just happens a lot. My shoes are still somewhere."

Draco closed his eyes for a second. Then he opened them and said, "You don't deserve them."

Luna smiled at him. "No one has the clothes they deserve. There's always some mismatch between them and their owner. Either the owner is better than the clothes, or the other way around." Some of the strange interactions between people and their robes in Madam Malkin's…

She opened her mouth to tell Draco about that, but Draco said, "I'm going to make sure all your clothes come back to you from now on."

"Thank you, that's very sweet."

"I have to do something to make up for it."

"Make up for what?"

Draco looked at her, but his face seemed a little less hopeless than before. "Just—something that probably isn't that important to you," he said. "But it is to me."

"Oh, all right." Luna accepted that. There were all sorts of things that people thought were important that she didn't. This was only one more.

Draco held out his hand. For a second, Luna thought he wanted her socks back, which didn't make sense, because he was wearing his own socks. But then she realized, and she solemnly shook his hand.

Then Draco went around the corner, and Luna went back to the webs, happy she could help a friend.

* * *

"I didn't expect to see you back here so early."

"My father thought it would be a better place for me," said Luna, and leaned back to smile at Draco. She had been sitting at the window in the fourth-floor corridor that always showed what was really outside, instead of what people wished was there. She could contemplate the snow from here. "He always mourns my mother today, and he doesn't like me around."

Draco hesitated before he sat down in the window seat Luna loved. "Is this the day she died?"

"No, only the day he chose to mourn her."

Draco hesitated again. "That seems strange."

"Lots of things about my father do."

Draco must not have been interested in talking about her father, because he went silent. Luna went on watching the snow. Everyone would come back tomorrow and upset it, but for now, there was just a silent white blanket over all the cobblestones and grass and even the lake.

Luna was squinting to see if she could make out the almost invisible prints of a Bufflebird when Draco spoke again. "You seem—so serene. I don't know how you got over the war."

"I didn't get over it," Luna explained patiently. This was the sort of thing she had to explain even to her father sometimes, so she knew how to do it. But it was still boring, so she tried to find some different words. "You can't do that. You just go on and get interested in other things."

"I wish I knew how to do that."

Luna perked up. That was the sort of thing her father would _never_ have said. She turned around and faced Draco, who looked grim and sad. Maybe all his Christmas gifts had been nargle-infested. "I can show you how!"

"You can?"

"Yes. First you have to curl your feet up beneath you and close your eyes."

Draco looked a little skeptical, but _that_ was also something Luna was used to. Slowly, he curled his feet up and closed his eyes.

"Now you need to think about all the animals you've ever seen."

"What? Luna, I can't do that—"

"Close your eyes again," Luna said, and waited until he'd obeyed. He was a little grumpy. Well, she would go and burn an eggshell for him later. "Now. I didn't say that you had to think about them for a _long_ time. Just try to think about them for a second. All at once. All the beetles and the flies and the Kneazles and the owls and the spiders and the snakes and the horses and the hippogriffs and the unicorns and the flobberworms and the dragons and the rats and the mice and the dogs and the…"

She went on listing them, and saw Draco's head slowly bow with the weight of them as he listened. Luna then ended triumphantly, "And _then_ think about the fact that ever since you saw them, there are _more._ The dragons will have laid eggs. There will be _thousands_ of beetles. And the spiders all climbing in their webs. And think about all the animals you weren't thinking about, the nargles and the thestrals and the bees and all the rest of them. All of them are out there living their lives."

Draco sucked in his breath in a way that made Luna think he was getting it. But then he opened his eyes again and said, "I don't understand. How is that meant to help me go on?"

Luna looked at him, her mouth a little open. She didn't have words for this, because it had never occurred to her that someone who had come this far could _misunderstand_.

"Because they're living," she said finally. "And they go on living. And some of them are friendly, and some of them don't care about you, and because whatever you want to forget isn't going to touch at least some of them. They just go on _existing_. Isn't it _beautiful_?"

Draco stood up abruptly. Luna thought he would leave, and she was sorry. But then Draco caught his breath and whispered, "You really believe that."

"Yes, of course. What would be the point of lying? It's hard enough to get people to see the truth."

Draco gave her a strange, cautious smile and sat back down. Luna hoped he would stay. When he closed his eyes, she was sure of it.

"And I should be thinking of all the animals?"

"Yes." Luna nodded and sat back. "The dolphins in the sea. The Bufflebirds flapping along in the snow."

"What's a Bufflebird?"

Luna smiled contentedly. She would have such a _lot_ to teach him.

* * *

"I wanted to ask you something, Luna," Draco said, breaking into a trot beside her. "Can I carry something?"

Luna shook her head. She knew her load looked heavy, but really, it was just ribbons and bells and feathers and wires and strings and little balls made of glass, the usual load that the thestrals liked to play with. "This is awkward. But I have to carry it myself. Otherwise, the thestrals will get upset."

"All right."

Luna smiled at him. She liked the way Draco never argued with her, not anymore. He realized there were more important things, too.

"Well," Draco said, as they walked past a huge oak and found the one that Luna wanted to rearrange the thestrals' treasures under, "does anyone take—I mean, do your clothes disappear anymore?"

Luna thought about it while she set up a circle of the glass balls and put three feathers inside them, then added some dried rose petals. "No, I don't think they have," she said. "They've decided to stay close to home. Well, except my scarf the other day. But I don't need it so much now that the snow's melting."

"Who took your scarf?"

Luna shook her head. "No one did. I went back into the Charms classroom the next day and it was there. I must not have wrapped it securely enough around my shoulders when I got up, and it decided to go explore by itself."

"I'm glad you found it." Draco watched her with his eyes mostly on the feathers, but Luna could tell when someone was looking at her. She had years of practice. "Do…they ever tell you what they found when they go exploring?"

"Oh, yes," said Luna. She decided five rose petals were enough for that particular circle, and moved on to a pair of roots on the other side of the tree. "Most people have no chance to listen to their clothes, you know."

"No chance? Or no desire?"

"I do like someone who appreciates the subtleties," said Luna happily. She couldn't remember anyone else ever asking her that question before, just like no one had ever really tried to meditate on all the animals. "But really, it's just that people don't sit in quiet places and ask their clothes questions. They could hear them easily enough if they just did that."

Draco nodded and followed her to the other side of the tree. Then he said, "I'll try listening to my shoes."

"You do that," said Luna, and waved as he turned and went back to Hogwarts.

* * *

"I don't—quite understand," Draco said, and his voice was a little breathless. "You want to come with _me_? Don't you have traps to set or something?"

"Those are never traps," Luna corrected him. "They're gifts. And of course I want to come with you. I like to spend time with my friends."

Draco didn't say anything, which was like him, but kept walking in the direction of the lake. Luna followed peacefully. If what Draco did was boring, then she would watch for traces of the ripple that she _knew_ marked the presence of a second Giant Squid in the lake. Her father was printing a series of articles right now that showed the truth. It was just a pity that so few people read them.

"Do you know why I come down here?" Draco asked a few minutes later, when they were beside the lake and Luna had confirmed that neither squid was at the surface.

"To skip stones." Luna nodded at the stones he was throwing into the lake. Of course they didn't skip properly, they just threw, but Luna could be tolerant. She would show him the proper way to skip them later.

"No." Draco hesitated again, then plunged ahead. "I was listening to my shoes, the way you said."

Luna clapped her hands. "What did they _say_?" She'd only ever had the little gossipy or sulky conversations with her own clothes that she knew half of anyway, because she was there most of the time with them.

"They said—they told me that I need to try one more time."

Before Luna could ask what that meant, Draco turned around and stared at her. "Listen, Luna. I'm _sorry_. Will you let me say that? I'm sorry for locking you up in the cellars under my house. I'm sorry for everything you had to endure there."

"Oh. I didn't know that."

"You didn't know I was _sorry_?"

Draco sounded a little sniffly. "You should eat radishes for your cold," Luna told him, but then went on, because she knew that he couldn't eat radishes right now, there were none around here, and she foolishly hadn't brought any. "I didn't know you had locked me in the cellars. You must have done it when you were under an Invisibility Cloak. Is it as good as Harry's?"

"No. Luna. Listen."

She did, but she didn't hear anything. Draco was just standing there not saying anything, and it seemed a strange way to conduct business to Luna. But she finally said, "What did you want to say?"

"I didn't do it. Not directly, I mean. But I feel responsible for it."

Luna patted his arm. "I can't tell you what to do or say about your feelings." It was something she was trying to keep in mind, that she couldn't always make people see what was perfectly obvious to _her_.

"Does that mean you accept my apology?"

"It's not necessary. The apology, I mean. But I accept it."

Luna said that mainly because she didn't want her friends to be unhappy. But Draco smiled all over his face, and that meant she had done more than make him _not_ unhappy. She had made him happy.

She showed him how to skip stones and watch for ripples the rest of the afternoon, and he told her would ask the house-elves for radishes at dinner that night. It was a perfect day, Luna thought, especially when she got back to her bedroom and found a letter from her father about how they would go to look for Crumple-Horned Snorkacks that summer.

* * *

"You'll write?"

"Of course I'll write."

Luna turned and held out her arms to Draco, because it seemed to her that the desolate tone in his voice needed it. Draco grabbed her and hugged her long enough that her father had to clear his throat a little. He'd come to get Luna from school directly, because their International Portkey left that afternoon. Luna didn't mind. The Hogwarts Express was nice, but she got to say good-bye to all her friends here.

"You've been the best," Draco whispered fiercely to her as they stood there in the entrance hall. "You've taught me to think about things other than just how hopeless everything is since the war."

"Me and your shoes. And the animals."

"All of them."

Luna smiled. She knew sometimes people just agreed with her to be kind, but she also knew Draco was doing more than that at the moment. "Good," she said. "Write to me about your mother and the rest of your clothes and your other friends."

Draco nodded once. "It's thanks to you that I have them."

Luna didn't ask about that. If Draco wanted her to know, he would have told her. They all should have some secrets. "Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Luna." Draco hugged her one more time and turned to go back into the Great Hall.

Luna smiled as she watched him. She was glad that they were going to the Continent. She would have so many interesting things to write in letters to Draco.

She only hoped that he would go on listening to his shoes and thinking about animals, because those really were big things. Large things. Things that mattered.

 **The End.**


End file.
